Thrusting the Steyr’s barrel through the underbrush, he noted that Doc was safely out of harm’s way. The gang members milled around in the clearing, not yet in complete control of their mounts.
“Philox!” Liberty roared, twisting his head to the right as he reached under the wag’s seat and came away with an ammo belt.
Ryan put the Steyr’s crosshairs over Liberty’s face, leading the man slightly as the gang leader moved across the wag. He squeezed the trigger, spotting the horse and rider that reared in the way only a chron tick before the big sniper weapon crashed into his shoulder.
The 7.62 mm round cored through the horse’s neck, cutting through the jugular and unleashing a torrent of blood. It whinnied in pain and fear, fighting harder than ever against the commands of its rider.
“Fireblast!” Ryan snarled, chambering another round. He looked for Liberty again, but there was too much confusion in the clearing.
Some of the gang members took advantage of the situation to start raiding the supplies spread out on the blanket. They remained in position, though. Ryan peered through the scope. A slight squeeze of the trigger, and one of the riders sprawled to the ground, kicking through the last reflexive movements his nervous system allowed.
Bullets smacked into the shelf of rock before Ryan, driving him back. He found another target, so close he didn’t even need the Steyr’s scope. He trusted his instincts and experience with the weapon. His finger stroked the trigger, putting a bullet into the center of the man’s chest and bursting his heart.
Three bullets gone and two men down. It wasn’t enough, and fighting a protracted engagement wasn’t something the companions could afford to do.
Ryan raised his voice as he swapped shots with another gang member, neither of them hitting anything. “Krysty, do it now!”
TITIAN-HAIRED Krysty Wroth moved from hiding and made for the tree along the uneven rock face where she had taken up a position. She raised her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 640 and ripped off two shots at a man closing in on Doc. Both shots went wide of their mark, but they came close enough to send the man diving for cover.
“Down, Krysty!” Mildred Wyeth yelled behind her.
Krysty dived at once, splaying flat on hands and knees. Still, she kept moving forward. Bullets pocked the rock face above her, showering rock splinters that stung her back and legs.
She heard the distinctive detonation of Mildred’s .38-caliber ZKR 551 target pistol banging behind her. Men yelled and cursed in pain. A shootist in the last-ever Olympic games, Mildred was hell on wheels with a pistol.
Krysty threw herself the last few feet to her goal: the old gnarled oak tree that held the rope to spring the trap Ryan had set up for the encounter. She ripped Ryan’s panga from her hand-stitched cowboy boot and rose with the knife in her hand.
The rope snaked around the oak tree, safely hidden from most casual inspections.
A man erupted from the ground in front of Krysty, rising up out of the brush. The maniacal face was limned in blood, and there was no way to tell if it was his or someone else’s.
“Goddamn bitch!” the man snarled. He raised a double-bitted ax that had been cut down to a hand weapon and looped around his wrist by a leather thong. “Going to cut you a little now, cut you deeper later.” He swung the blade.
A little under six feet tall and graced by nature and hard living with a strength that surprised most people, Krysty met the man’s attack head-on. She lifted the panga and turned the sweep of the ax head enough to miss her. Then she brought around the panga, the razor edge neatly slicing off two of the man’s fingers. The wounds spurted blood as the digits dropped to the ground.
The man shouted in pain.
Krysty rammed the .38 into his face and pulled the trigger twice. The first bullet kicked the man’s head back, and the second turned it sideways.
As the dying man dropped to the ground, Krysty turned and swung the panga at the rope coiled around the tree. The keen-edged steel sliced through the rope as if it were wet paper.